Free Republic

As Obama's consumer watchdog agency kneecaps yet another car lender for payola for Democrat constituents, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders pledge to double down on the monstrous abuses carried about by the agency. The five-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, now the single most powerful and least accountable federal agency in Washington, just put a $22 million hit on Toyota Motor Credit over more trumped-up racism charges. All told, the out-of-control agency has extracted more than $220 million from the auto finance industry, including major players Ally Bank, Honda and Fifth Third Bank. Several other lenders are under anti-bias investigation. The...

Donald Trump seems quite certain that the real unemployment rate is higher than the 4.9 percent that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported it to be. A lot higher. "Don't believe these phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment," Mr. Trump said in his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night. "The number's probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent." Mr. Trump might be bombastic, but he's not entirely wrong. And the ways in which he is wrong are actually useful for anyone who wants to...

Google GOOGL +0.83% is removing the loophole allowing European users to sidestep the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling that censors their search results. After the European Court of Justice ruled two years ago that people could ask for search results to be removed if they contained inaccurate or ‘outdated’ information, Google attempted to strike a compromise. It complied with the order – but only for European versions of its website. This meant that European users wanting to see uncensored results have only to log on to Google.com to get the unedited version; and plenty do. This state of affairs, as...

SEOUL, South Korea-Stocks shuddered again Thursday, led by a sharp drop in Hong Kong as it caught up with global market turmoil after Lunar New Year holidays. An escalation in tensions between North and South Korea added to a litany of woes for markets that were already flustered by signs of slowing global growth and the slide in oil prices. ANALYST'S TAKE: "What started in January as mainly China based worries has clearly broadened back out to concerns about global growth," said Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP Capital in Sydney. He said five fault lines are driving concerns about...

The stock market is having a horrible time so far in 2016, with the S&P 500 down more than 9%. Gold, on the other hand, is up nearly 10% year-to-date and hit a four-month high of just under $1200 per ounce on Monday before dipping 0.7% Tuesday to $1189.30. It's a bit of a cliche to say that people turn to gold in times of uncertainty: Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Gold did phenomenally well from 2000-2011 but really suffered after hitting nearly $2000 per ounce in 2011. From 2011 to 2015, the yellow metal pretty much fell in...

"..economic libertarians and others who place a high value on property rights, the right to earn a living, and the right to open a business will find no better friend than Texas senator Ted Cruz...his work at the FTC established a foundation on which the cause of economic liberty progresses still today.Leading a team of senior FTC lawyers, Cruz...relentlessly [fought] against state laws conferring privilege on politically and economically powerful interest groups.Many of these laws do little more than protect entrenched incumbents from small entrepreneurs seeking to open a business and earn a living. Cruz and his team vigorously opposed...

I have no clue how many climate science denial myths a Republican presidential candidate can fit onto the head of a pin, but given these zingers are generally huge it's probably not that many. But we do now have some clue how many myths one of those candidates, Senator Ted Cruz, can fit into an eight-minute diatribe. At least six. When asked about climate change at recent hustings, Cruz has been delivering a stock set of answers from the Little Book of Climate Change Denial (not a real book). At one such event in New Hampshire, the representative from Texas...

One of the most surprising comments this year came from a closed session on fintech where I sat next to someone in policy circles who argued that we should move quickly to a cashless economy so that we could introduce negative rates well below 1% – as they were concerned that Larry Summers' secular stagnation was indeed playing out and we would be stuck with negative rates for a decade in Europe. They felt below (1.5)% depositors would start to hoard notes, leading to yet further complexities for monetary policy.

With the republican primary race now heading to South Carolina we take a look at the last verifiable polling (large sample, low MOE) which was taken by NBC and the Wall Street Journal in January (full pdf below). Remember the golden rule of MSM polling. “When polls are silent, it generally means the outcomes are adverse to their preferred media narrative."

Heidi Cruz misstated her husband's vote on a key and controversial trade provision last year in a radio interview this week. The issue of trade has become a hot one for both parties this cycle. Donald Trump's made the case that the United States is getting screwed on free trade -- that U.S. policies have ruined the wages for the American worker. In a radio interview on South Carolina's Vince Coakley Radio Program, Heidi Cruz argued free trade is a powerfully good force and that presidents should have increased powers to negotiate trade deals -- a policy that has become...

From the skeptics and common sense win one department…Tanner’s Creek Power Station in Lawrenceburg, IN – closed in 2015 by new EPA regulations. Photo by A. Watts A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday abruptly halted President Obama’s controversial new power plant regulations, dealing a blow to the administration’s sweeping plan to address global warming.In a 5-4 decision, the court halted enforcement of the plan until after legal challenges are resolved.The surprising move is a victory for the coalition of 27 mostly Republican-led states and industry opponents that call the regulations “an unprecedented power grab.”By temporarily freezing the rule the...

Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would benefit 927,400 city workers and pump $6.5 billion into the city's economy, according to state Labor Department report released Wednesday. The report predicted that Gov. Cuomo’s proposal for a $15 minimum wage would boost wages for 2.3 million workers across the state and generate $15.7 billion for New York's economy through increased consumer spending. ... Release of the report came a day after state Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk County), who has expressed reservations about Cuomo's plan, said Senate Republicans needed more information about the proposal's impact. A report produced...

Trump is a guy a lot of people dislike.  How many times have I read comments on FR about Trump being "full of himself", "an ego maniac", a "blowhard bragger", and so forth. And yet his fans see the opposite.  They enjoy listened to Trump talk about his accomplishments and at the rallies they laugh with him about his braggadocious ways.  They enjoy seeing his handsome family, his opulent apartment, the Trump jet, the helicopter -- even the Darth Trump parody which makes fun of Trump's bragging style. So what's going on?  What do Trump's fans see that his...

(Ivar Giaever) Nobel Prize Winner to Obama: You Are Wrong on Climate Change Surprising and Shocking! At a speech in Lindau, Germany, before scientists from 90 countries, Giaever disagreed with the President when Obama stated that "no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." The Nobel Laureate's response? "He is dead wrong!" Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever told President Obama, whom he had endorsed for President in 2008, that he has it all wrong about climate change. It's not mankind's fault at all, but a normal process with little negative impact. The scientist cited statistics which showed...

An OPEC production cut is unlikely until U.S. production declines by about another million barrels per day (mmbpd). OPEC won’t cut because it would accomplish nothing beyond a short-term increase in price. Carefully placed comments by OPEC and Russian oil ministers about the possibility of production cuts achieve almost the same price increase as an actual cut. Bad News About The Oil Over-Supply from IEA and EIA The International Energy Agency (IEA) and U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shook the markets yesterday with news that the world’s over-supply of oil has gotten worse rather than better in recent months. IEA...

Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort https://iapp.org/news/a/obama-establishes-federal-privacy-council-as-part-of-massive-cyber-effort/ Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort Sam Pfeifle The Privacy Advisor | Feb 9, 2016 Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort As part of his 2017 budget proposal for the United States, President Barack Obama is including $19 billion for cybersecurity efforts, a 35-percent increase over fiscal year 2016. The funds will go toward a Cybersecurity National Action Plan, which includes the hiring of a chief information security officer, a $3.1 billion fund for IT modernization at the...

You might not like Trump but you have to hand it to him...the man has great taste in airplanes. Rather than buying one of those boring 737 BBJs he went for this beauty. This gives you an idea of how Trump works and treats his employes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgWVGNmORJs

AIR passengers face longer costlier flights to the United States as a result of global warming, a British scientist warned yesterday. Climate change is expected to accelerate the high altitude jet stream which blows from west to east, said Reading University atmospheric scientist Paul Williams. This will speed up eastbound flights but slow down westbound flights by much more, he claimed. "The bad news for passengers is that westbound flights will be battling against stronger headwinds. The good news is that eastbound flights will be boosted by stronger tailwinds, but not enough to compensate for the longer westbound journeys."

Facebook has been dragged into an embarrassing row in India after one of its directors said “anti-colonialism” was to blame for the country's economic struggles. Marc Andreessen was accused of endorsing colonial rule by thousands of angry Twitter users on Wednesday after he posted the controversial message on the social media website. The row comes days after India banned a Facebook programme called Free Basics, which offers free but restricted internet access to people in poor, rural areas.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is calling for a Justice Department investigation into allegations that a northeastern utility company fired hundreds of workers and forced them to train their less expensive foreign replacements. In a story that has become more common, Eversource Energy has been accused of contracting with outsourcing firms to import lower-paid, foreign workers on H-1B visas to replace their American information technology staff. In the process, the 200 workers who lost their jobs were allegedly made to train their replacements and remain silent about the matter."I am greatly concerned about whether Eversource has violated current law," Blumenthal wrote...